Hoorah! stomps feet in approval

I can already agree with you because I know good and well 6 future players of this game that would not touch one of the 10 "strong" MMOG's....my daughter and her friends.

Have you ever seen Neopets? It's not an MMOG, per-se, but it's amazingly popular among girls and children. There's no point or plot. You just care for your neopets and buy them things by scoring points in games of chance and skill.

If Nintendo made something with Pokemon and their other characters that'd hook into the PC or gamecube similar to Neopets, they'd make more money than most of the countries in the world.

Wow.

Your right.  That's what has happened to every other industry in the world (pretty much), why would MMO's be different.

Yep, don't underestimate the power of the mainstream.

I think GTA Online has a good chance of rivalling Hello Kitty MMOG. Particularly if there's room in the GTA universe to emulate whatever crime show is hot on TV this season.

Hoorah! from here as well.  One of the things MMORPGs and RPGs in general need to get away from is the morass of statistics they dump onto the player.  I've only just begun to realize that all the number juggling doesn't make the game more enjoyable--it actually detracts from it.

If nothing else, the GTA: San Andreas approach, where the numbers are represented as bars, is far more preferable.

Uh, Jesse, its called Animal Crossing.  And the next iteration will probably be online.

Puzzle Pirates anyone?

andrej: not to mention that the Pokemon games are getting pretty close to working like that already. And then you have Monster Rancher. I'd say all these things are also more 'niche' products than 'mass market', though - they're just different niches. It's not like EVERYONE in Japan loves Hello Kitty; it's a fairly focussed target market.

The way I understand it Hello Kitty is like a national obsession in Japan, I just a read a story about a 40 year old woman who not only has her entire apartment decked out in the shit, but wants her tombstone to be a hello kitty head aswell.

...they even release special ruby/diamond collector's heads for the rich to buy on Hello Kitty's anniversaries.   And people actually buy them.  So I think the market is probably large enough to con tons of people into a steap monthly fee on a slapped together MMOG.

Considering Sanrio has been one of the most litigious companies in regards to the defense of their brands (just watch what happens when someone dares put anything resembling HK or any of the characters on a t-shirt or even on a Web site,) I can't imagine they're going to be well suited to running a MMOG, where their brand is going to be appropriated and sometimes perverted by their player base.

Disney VR has already got a great thing going right now with Toontown Online, but their success comes from very carefully crafted customer service and support policies. If you think HKO looks cool, go play Toontown. It's got a three-day trial time.

No doubt about it !
Kitty online will be very popupar.

I saw the mass histeria about the open beta of Seal Online in Taiwan, that online game has 1 thing and 1 thing only (just like Hello Kitty) that makes it stand out, IT SO DARN CUTE !
Seal online has this EXTREMELY CUDDLY "killer rabbit" monster which is one of their icons in the game's advertisement. I got to get me an adorable killer bunny doll in the TGS (Taiwan Game Show) when i was working as a game developing cosultant there.
I wrote about it almost a year ago in my blog
There are also pictures there of what i'm talking about.

From what i've heard they already have over a million paying customers (~15$ per month) for Seal Onlline in Taiwan. and that's ONLY IN TAIWAN.

Are you questoining why the market and investors tend to put their money into MMO games rather then 2d adventures ????

Cute game, it seems.

I predict that your prediction is right on the spot.

I am disappointed that the gaming industry choose safety over innovation.

Well that goes for any industry I guess.
It is rational to want profit, but if all publishers fund the ideas that are most likely to generate some form of profit, then a ton of games would be more or less carbon copies of eachother...

Are you questoining why the market and investors tend to put their money into MMO games rather then 2d adventures ????

Not that I can speak for mr. Gilbert in any way, but I expect him to care more about what the adventure is about (story, plotline, puzzles) than the format (3d, 2d....)

wtf? are you saying that there are actually people out there who don't get turned on by abstract rules and concepts, and don't enjoy maximizing avatar attributes, and optimizing strategies? seriously dude, who would pick hello kitty, when everyone knows that devil orcs give a +5 to strength after the lust upgrade at lvl 18?

somebody should tell these people that computer games are about computing, not kitties!

I've come to hate all the lame games online that are based on numbers.

Example: More people have clicked on my link than yours... Therefore i have more men,
therefore i win...

100menvs102men = 102men wins.

mwhahahahaha, i rock cause i can count! :-)

Can't (won't) visit Toontown Online because it requires an inferior, buggy browser.

This has already happened, I think. Compare Yahoo Games numbers vs. all the SOE games.

m.

Now, anyone know how I can get into the closed beta?

Hmm. Let me think Ron.  How about e-mailing them and saying Hi my names Ron Giblert, a might programer.  And maybe thell go ok beta this for us I mean stranger things have happend.  You never know they might be looking for a programmer and you definely have experience.

"The way I understand it Hello Kitty is like a national obsession in Japan"

sure, but in the same way, say, Disney is elsewhere. For instance, the male Hello Kitty fanbase isn't what you'd call gigantic. I'd say for a Hello Kitty game the players will, overwhelmingly, be females in the 10-30 age range. This doesn't mean it's somehow less valuable or inferior to other games, but it's just as much aimed at a specific group. If they made an MMORPG out of the LotR license and marketed it properly - current LotR game marketing seems to be aimed at teenage boys exclusively - it would have a better shot at appealing to everyone.

Hey Ron!    
My name is Danilo Puce and I come from La Spezia, Italy.    
I find very interesting your ideas about video games and all the articles that you have done. I am a great fan of yours, and I admire all the games that you have realized for the LucasArts.    
You are a model for me and for many friends of mine (Monkey Island Forever!).    
I believe that, according also to Mr. Stan Lee, great responsibilities derive from great powers.    
So why don't you use your enormous wisdom, your experience and your dowries to create  something again? You should return to work to games, like only you are able to do, what does prevent you from it, Ron? You have all the possibilities to do it.    
When he was 80 yo Plato made a cultural revolution. You are  brave  enough to  help the industry to get back its golden age! Or will we have to wait for your 80 years?    
    
Sincerely yours,    
Danilo    
    
P.S. Forgive my English

Damn it Ron, are you keeping your dowries from us??!

Whoops...I mean "qualities"...

One of the main problems with MMORPGs, and RPGs in general, is something Ron has touched on before - the assumption that the character, and therefore the player, is somehow familiar with the world at the start of play.  So many MMORPGs dump you into a world with little to no explanation beyond a simple interface tutorial, and leave you to wander around figuring things out.  Furthermore, although this is a different problem altogether, the majority of times you need information, you'll have to go outside of the game to a website to read up on the latest changes to the game.  Nothing is handled in-game.  MMORPGs will never be mainstream until they can overcome this glaring flaw and present to the player all of the information they need to play and enjoy the game, IN the game itself.

Back to the assuming the player knows the world because his character does, I'll use an example that does it right. City of Heroes greets the player with a very good tutorial at the start of play, then slowly guides the player step by step until he/she is comfortable with the world and how it works.  When the player is given a mission, the location is marked on his/her map and the player can run straight there without getting lost.  He/she still has to visit areas to remove the fog of the unknown, but the view of the city and each area is on every map, just greyed out slightly until you've been there.

Contrast this with, let's say, World of Warcaft.  WoW takes a somewhat two-handed approach that doesn't work on either front.  First, the assumption is there that the player knows the land, because locations for quests are not marked on the player's map, but general (and fairly vague) directions are given.  At the same time, however, the game assumes that the character and player have never been anywhere in the world, as the map reveals nothing and the player is awarded "Discovery" points when he/she comes across a new landmark.  It's a bad system that lends to players getting lost trying to start the first quests of the game, then giving up in frustration.  Add to that no explanation of any of the side aspects of the game such as crafting and resource gathering, it all adds up to having to sit and read the manual - then go to the website to find out all of the information that has drastically changed since the manual was printed, just to know how to play the game and what does what.

Bleh.  Simple is dumb - simple is elegant.

Um, I think I forgot a "not" in there someplace....

Simple is NOT dumb - simple is elegant.....or maybe I'm dumb....

And CD's are a fad.

Everquest 2, in spite of all logic that dictates it should be otherwise, is actually really well done.  Color me surprised.

hi